A really conversation I had with someone this week was about how to have a healthy relationship with their parents now that they’re an adult.
We were discussing what it would look like to now fight falling back into that child-parent relationship and stay with adult-adult relationship dynamics.
It’s a great question because so often we can slip right back into the dynamics that we had in our childhood and upbringing, but when you’ve done all this work to become this independent, confident, capable human being, when you go back into the family environment, that’s where it can be the hardest to maintain being that confident, confident, capable human being.
Finding a Balance in Your Relationship
We’re looking for one independent adult talking to another independent adult who are both interdependent with each other.
You’re looking to maintain that ability to be an adult that takes care of themselves when you spend time with a parent who allows and encourages you to be that adult. You’re also then that adult that encourages the other person to be their own adult.
You’re both adults taking care of your own adult needs, who can both rely on each other and have a relationship with each other.
What you’re looking for is to maintain that strength in being the strong, capable, independent adult that you are, as well as allowing yourself to lean on your family member in a way that allows them to see that you’re still an adult.
Give it a shot. Try take action in a small way before you try to change the entire relationship dynamics in one conversation. Look for one small place where you can implement this way of thinking and take action.
An example of implementing this can be if your parents are telling you how to parent your child.
That can be one place where you say, “thanks, mom. I appreciate your advice on how I should bath my kid at a certain time, but I am an adult with my own kid now and believe in my own ability to know when to bath and care for them. If I need help, I promise that I will come to you because I do appreciate that you have been there before, and what you have to say is often valuable.”
